Techcrunch goes to war against Engadget, accuses sister blog of corruption

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When AOL purchased Michael Arrington‘s Techcrunch network last year for $25 million, the immediate question that came to everyone’s mind was how long AOL could keep Arrington on staff.

It was an important question. The Techcrunch brand is worth significantly less without Arrington, but the very qualities that make Arrington popular on the Internet — including his quickness to launch into a flame war — were likely to make him a liability at AOL.

AOL and Arrington both said that they had an understanding, and that Arrington was contractually bound to three years employment for a substantial additional sum, which he would lose if he quit. Of course, if Arrington were fired for just being himself, AOL would have to pay him out…. and Arrington would be free to take his $25 million and start up Techcrunch v2.0 somewhere else.

It now looks like this is exactly what Arrington is trying to do: get himself fired. Over the last week, Arrington has been flinging insult after insult at sister blog Engadget, accusing it of being not just an “immensely unethical” publication, but a “plasticized caricature of a real blog.”

One way to look at it would be that Arrington’s attacks don’t really make any sense unless he’s trying to get fired. At one point, he accuses an Engadget editor who left a “slow news day” comment on Techcrunch as a member of an Engadget-led conspiracy against him. For right now, AOL’s trying to stay out of the spat, but they’ll have to enter the fray sometime… and when they do, things are going to explode. Grab the popcorn.